


Breeding Lilacs Out Of The Dead Land.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Aliens, Future Fic, Gen, Methos Still Cheats At The Game, Methos Wins The Prize, POV Original Character, POV Outsider, Post-The Gathering, Spaceships, There Can Be Only One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 04:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10677309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: My papa builds spaceships.





	Breeding Lilacs Out Of The Dead Land.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. The fic probably owes something to This Too Shall Pass by Danny Schmidt, which I had on eternal repeat while writing this.

My papa builds spaceships. 

It's not like you see in the big shipyards. Papa's been building them for years and years in the same shop, always the same kind of ship. He likes the small kinds, you know, just for a couple people. He says they're personalized, but still of a type, and that makes it easy to make and also easy to make it for someone specific. The yard is just our yard, a few acres. He hires people and then they go away after a while, off to set up their own shops in other cities. Beatrice, you remember, the one with the voice, she went off to Mars to set up her own shop. Sometimes she sends souvenirs. Papa likes it when she calls. He says she always has good stories.

Papa always says the best stories aren't true stories, but they're still true anyways. He likes to tell me stories like that sometimes. I was born with a wrench in my hand, they all say, but, really, I was born when Papa ran out of stories and needed new ones to tell. He always tells me about the day I was born and what I was like as a baby. He had other babies before me and they come to visit sometimes, too. Their stories are never like Papa's, though. Papa tells the best stories.

Papa says I was a gift to him from one of the neighbors, who had promised him her firstborn in exchange for ship repairs. That's one of those stories that's not-true-but-also-true. I mean, I'm Aunt Molly's third-born. But my papa had wanted a baby around, and Aunt Molly was really busy with Grandma, so Aunt Molly had me and then Papa took me home. Grandma's okay now, though. She comes to visit Papa for repairs to her ship every few months. I don't know why she doesn't just get a new ship, since hers is a clunker, everyone says, but Grandma likes it. She says she's had it ever since Papa gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday and she wasn't going to give it up just because it was having some coolant problems. That's a quitter attitude, and the Piersons aren't quitters.

Papa makes the best small space ships, everyone knows, but when my papa started Dawson's, it was just after the lightning storms, this was back before we had Contact. Papa was building boats mostly for people then, you know just the stuff that will get you to the Moon, won't even get you to an asteroid or anything interesting. But things change fast. After Contact, that's when Papa became famous.

This is a true story: the aliens needed spare parts, and no one remembered how to make them anymore, but my papa did. Papa's the only one who makes ships like the aliens liked. Oh sure, the aliens will use other human ships, but they don't like them. They like Papa's, because Papa is the best. Papa likes to do things the old ways, he calls them the classic ways. Ain't nothing wrong with things that aren't broken. Papa doesn't believe in change just for change. He used to, I think. He's got some old books. One of them has an inscription from old man Dawson: _to Adam, my forever chameleon_. Grandma says that Papa is different now from how he was when he first came here, but that was after the lightning, and disasters change people, like Mrs. Lawrence was after the river flooded.

But this is old stuff, old technology. My papa learned it when he was younger and he teaches it now, and his old students have their own shops, but it's still Papa that the aliens like to come to. They like that they remember him. When they travel, it's a long time for us, but not long for them, and they like that papa stays the same. They don't like when businesses open and close, or how much change happens when they're not looking. It's disconcerting. I mean, think of it, what if everything changed one day when you were on a field-trip, and you had to learn new languages and wear new clothing and eat new food. You'd want something old, right? The familiar is good. So the aliens like my papa, and my papa likes the aliens, because they're consistent customers and he knows what they'll like.

My papa tinkers, sometimes. He still builds boats when he's bored, to keep his hand in. I get to test them. Julie and me went to a trojan last year but the boat didn't land right, so we're not allowed to go out in it again until Papa has time to look at it. I told him that I could do it, and he says he'll think about it. I'm getting almost old enough to blow myself up with my own stupidity, Julie says, but she's just jealous.

If Papa is the one who has to fix it, it's going to be a while until it's done, because Papa suddenly got very busy with a special order. Some aliens came, and one of them gave my papa a headache, Papa said, so he wasn't on his best game, and he agreed to a stupid time frame. He hired on some extra folks for the job, and Papa spent a lot of time in the shed working on designs. It's based on a ship design from one of Papa's old books, the ones he wrote by hand a long time ago and brought with him when he came after the storms. I was worried about the headaches, because my papa never gets sick ever, but Papa says he hasn't gotten them since he moved here, and so it was probably just a fluke and I shouldn't worry. They're new customers, from a very far away planet, and they came just for Papa; otherwise I think Papa would have worried more about the headache instead of throwing himself into a new project. Papa likes challenges, it's just that usually he's the one challenging himself.

I'd never seen an order take Papa as long as this one. But the new aliens come two more times to consult with Papa, sketching out ideas and writing out changes for a long time before they leave again. It's not until the third time they come that it's all ready for them. It's a larger ship than Papa usually makes; this one can sit seven, and sleep five more in hibernation. It's still smaller than you'd get out of the big yards, though. Those never do anything less than a full complement.

Before they leave, the alien in charge says a lot of things to Papa about the last time there was Contact, and how things were different then, but Papa shrugs it off, because Papa doesn't have time, he has other orders that were backing up while he was making the new-old ship. The specifications for this one were based on a design so old, no one but Papa had any record of it, and even Papa's records hadn't been complete until the aliens had given him more details, so Bobby started writing it up for one of the journals. The aliens don't think of time the way we do, you know, so Bobby's not sure yet where or when this one comes from. No one remembers the last time Papa made something like this, even Papa doesn't really remember it. It's not in his records, we all checked.

And probably it's because Papa's never made this before, that I think he might have made a mistake. Six weeks after Bobby's article got accepted, we heard that the ship hadn't made it to port. They'd waited a while to tell us, something about an investigation, and there were a lot of concerned folks from the government who came by to talk to Papa about it. One of them even talked to me, asking if Papa had ever been negligent before, but I told them about Grandma's ship and how Papa's always been careful to make sure that it's always very safe, and about how Papa won't give me a boat until he's sure it won't hurt me, and the government people went away.

But Papa's reputation took a hit after that, and people got a little wary, since it was Papa's first mistake and it made the news everywhere, but that was okay, because the loyal customers still came back, and also it that meant Papa had time for other projects, his own personal challenges, since he wasn't getting as much business. No aliens like the ones who gave my papa headaches have come back, and Papa's been talking a little about moving on, about selling to yard to Beatrice, or maybe waiting until I'm a little older and giving it to me, and striking out again and seeing what's out there. 

If you want to know what I think, I think Papa got scared that he got sick. It's not like me, where I'll skin my knee or get the flu, Papa doesn't get sick. He's over-reacting, probably, but maybe he's also scared of doing it again. He'd spent so long working on _The Gathering_ , and to have it disappear into the dark like it did, that must have scared him. Getting sick and making mistakes, that's not like my papa.

My papa builds spaceships, and I think one day he's going to build himself one, and disappear. I'll miss him when he goes, but I know he'll be all right. Piersons are survivors, and my papa is the best survivor of them all.


End file.
